1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to drug compositions such as narcotic compositions, and also to methods, more especially intended for use in maintenance therapy programs. Maintenance therapy programs, under which the addicted patient receives a prescribed and regulated dosage of a narcotic or like drug under the supervision of a qualified therapist, are considered by many to be a satisfactory and effective treatment strategy for dealing with the problems of drug addiction since they give an opportunity for contact with the addict in a clinical environment in which therapeutic procedures can be applied so as to at least mitigate the social and medical difficulties associated with addiction.
Up to the present time, there has existed the problem of monitoring compliance by the patient with the maintenance program. It has been found that in some instances the patient has supplemented his prescribed dosage from illicit street sources, thus diminishing the effectiveness of the therapy. Further, the patient may illicitly dispose of or divert his dosage to other addicts.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Known analysis techniques can give a qualitative indication of the nature of the drugs taken, or can give a quantitative indication of the concentration of a drug in a specimen, but they do not permit determination of whether a given patient is taking his dosage as prescribed or whether he is supplementing it with the same narcotic obtained illegally. The use of creatinine and like markers does not solve the problem since the excretion profile of these substances in the urine is different from the drugs employed in maintenance programs. In the patent literature there are found descriptions of various techniques employed in connection with testing for drugs, e.g. the method of preparing lyophilized urine described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,901,655, Shukla et al. A method of determining barbiturates in a specimen is referred to in U.S. Pat. No. 3,275,416, Zaar et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,873,270 discloses a process for determining methadone in a specimen. Such determinations will not however indicate directly whether a patient has supplemented his prescribed dose. U.S. Pat. No. 3,915,639, Friedenberg describes a testing dip stick for abuse-type drugs such as amphetamines, narcotics, and barbiturates. This dip stick could not indicate whether a patient may be supplementing the dosage of a particular drug allotted to him with additional quantities of the same drug obtained illicitly.